


When the world is dyed in sand.

by bydinh



Category: Hey! Say! JUMP
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-28
Updated: 2014-09-28
Packaged: 2018-02-19 01:43:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2369822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bydinh/pseuds/bydinh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Apocalyptic AU; The Earth is restarting, turning everything into sand for a new world to start, a clean world. Ryutaro-centric.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When the world is dyed in sand.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this mostly while on Dayquil (that crap messes you up, man) so that's why it may seem like I'm a sociopath who likes to destroy character's reasons to live. Or maybe I'm just a sociopath who likes to destroy character's reasons to live. Nonetheless, I hope you enjoy it.

The Earth is steadily restarting.

The freak nature nature phenomenon of disappearing towns, cities, even whole continents, being replaced with a flatland of orange sand quickly stirred up commotion and became the long awaited apocalypse that people had joked about year after year. After the first week, the hype died along with the caving land. As people watched homes drown into the auburn sea, the once “phenomenon” numbed to become just another devastating part of the world that everyone must deal with. The pointless migrations from sinking continent to sinking continent continued on for three years until the realization of the redundancy of the extensive journeys came to light; there was no point to moving when everywhere was covered in sand.

However, when the human race itself began to disappear, chaos stuck.

No one knew whom the first person to turn into sand was, or even when or where the horrifying news began. What people did know was that the race to survive had begun.

Late night screams for a “buzzing” to cease and disintegrating bodies sprawled along the tops of buildings that were yet to sink became the view from every angle of the world. The correlation between the “buzzing” and the disappearances and bodies became obvious as one person after another went into insanity, yelling and screaming for the buzzing sound to stop, and disappeared soon after. Panic ensued as even the healthiest people began to dissipate and blend into the sand that covered the earth. It was a game of russian roulette without the consent of the player; the gun was held by someone higher, something on a level of outworldly power. There was not a single distinction of those who would be next to receive the buzz and who would be allowed a slightly extended life. God played the game fairly, picking names out of a hat. After all, everyone is equal in the eyes of God.

 

  
Morimoto Ryutaro had the luck of the draw and was the last surviving member of his family. After his younger brother had fallen to grain, he found himself like all the other survivors, digging out holes and slipping in wide metal pipes to the still running markets that were yet to fall completely under. It was funny how quickly breaking windows became normal. Sitting in the metal tube, faced with only a clear glass between his person and the limited supplies, sand compressing the outsides of the metal, there was no choice other than breaking the glass.

The idea was to salvage all the dry foods and water, maybe leave some for the secondary scavengers that seeked already inserted pipes rather than digging and putting in their own. Sliding off his backpack, Ryutaro shoved in a few bags of seaweed and jerky, then filling the rest of the space with water bottles. He picked out new shoes and new clothes on the way back to the metal tube. Out of habit, Ryutaro grabbed Shintaro’s favorite icecream from the generator-running fridge before crawling back up to the surface.

Sometimes the idea of coming back up to the surface seemed a bit crude. Underground there was a slight air conditioner from the still working fridges and the shade that came from being buried under sand, and food and water that wouldn’t need to be carried, not to mention the sleeping bags that would be easy to use on the markets’ floors. Outside, food and water had to be backpacked and sleeping bags came to be uncomfortable as sand poured in with every turn unconsciously done during sleep. But it didn’t take but a few steps for anyone to remember that claiming a market didn’t work, not during a time when there was a fight for survival. The occasional screams that didn’t come from the decaying surfaced echoing through the metal tubes. They became normal soon enough.

Fighting had never been Ryutaro’s style, though he did find himself wielding a backpack full of water bottles often enough, and the fact that attacks had become more prominent upsetted him. Not because of human casualty, that, he really didn’t mind, but rather because he was tired. Fighting while tired just made him more tired. So when he found himself face to face with a small boy who had a gun strapped to the side of his leg, he could only sigh.

“This is what I get for second scavenging,” Ryutaro muttered, dropping his head. He raised his arms. “I’ll walk away, it’s all yours buddy.”

Ryutaro turned to leave, a bit disappointed that his first secondary scavenge was a failure, when the boy grabbed his hand and pulled Ryutaro to look back. How the little body could retain so much strength, Ryutaro could not even begin to fathom the physics and biology behind it.

“I’m not sand.”

“Really,” Ryutaro inquired, his voice dripping with sarcasm, “well, neither am I.”

The boy stared at him, eyes wide and serious. Despite the taller’s sarcasm, the boy still seemed tense with a grave severity. He picked up Ryutaro’s hand, the one he had pulled, and stared deeply at the fingers and the palm, running his fingers along Ryutaro’s skin. He then looked back up to Ryutaro, turning his observational hand touching into a handshake.

“Chinen Yuri, nice to meet you.”

Ryutaro boredly stared at Chinen, glancing at his hand that the small boy had refused to let go of and back at his serious eyes. He wondered if this was some kind of psychological experiment or special attack, or something, anything. This “Chinen Yuri” was anything but normal. But seeing no other way to get out of the situation, Ryutaro apathetically replied, “Morimoto Ryutaro.”

 

  
Ryutaro wasn’t sure exactly how it happened but the suspicious “Chinen Yuri” character suddenly became an arm accessory that dragged behind him slightly, running a bit every so often to catch back up to his side. The boy still denied to release his hand, holding on to it as if for dear life. Ryutaro came to find comfort in it, sometimes pretending that the hand was of his lost brother’s. Even when their hands became slick with sweat from the sweltering heat, Chinen held on, and Ryutaro allowed it.

When nightfall came Chinen looked up at Ryutaro expectantly, and Ryutaro stared back with a blank look. The shorter boy gazed out at the horizon and then glanced at Ryutaro, looking away to muffle a yawn.

“Tired?” Ryutaro asked.

“Mm.” Chinen rubbed his eyes with his free hand.

“Well, I guess we can find a place for you to sleep for the night.”

Finding shelter was the most terrifying thing to Ryutaro. Maybe because of the high possibility of being murdered or maybe also because sleeping in an unknown bed could bring horrible, horrible thoughts. Such as the “activities” that could’ve occurred, or the fluids, or the sweat, or the skin flakes. Ryutaro refused to answer, even to himself, which of the two were the real reason he disliked looking for a place to spend the night.

Nonetheless, as every night before, he found a roof peeking from beneath the sand and started to piece the detachable pieces of the metal tube together before drilling it into the sand, then shoveling out the orange grains. He pulled out an extra piece of metal to break the plaster of the house and called for the dozing Chinen to slide down. As soon as the two entered the house, Chinen immediately attached his hand to Ryutaro’s hand again.

“Hey,” Ryutaro started, gaining the attention of the half-lidded eyes of the smaller, “how are you going to sleep if you don’t let go of my hand?”

Chinen didn’t answer, instead silently forcing himself to blink away the tiredness in order to keep from collapsing onto the ground. Ryutaro seemed to get the message of exhaustion and led him to a bedroom, picking up Chinen and putting him on the bed when the boy’s body was too weak to climb up itself. Regardless of weakness, Chinen didn’t let go, and Ryutaro found himself slipping into bed with him.

The springs were easily felt under the thin fabric of the mattress, creaking and jabbing with every movement that either of the two made. When Chinen moved to curl up to Ryutaro’s body, the springs seemed to angrily screech and stab the two as if angry for the disturbance.

After a few minutes of silence, Ryutaro heard Chinen mumble into his arm, “this bed is really uncomfortable.”

“I know,” Ryutaro murmured back, closing his eyes, “it’s really uncomfortable.”

 

  
The routine of waking up, walking, scavenging, and then sleeping was already ingrained in Ryutaro’s head, but doing so with Chinen somehow kept things interesting. Maybe because it was different to have someone attached to the side of his body, to feel insane heat against his arm because of the body heat added with the sun. Ryutaro was impressed with how Chinen could hold on so tightly while the sun was still so high in the sky, even more so because he was holding onto a complete stranger. But then again, maybe they were acquaintanced back before the sand apocalypse, Ryutaro couldn’t remember anything before the day Shintaro died.

It was a funny thing, his reaction to Shintaro’s death. Ryutaro couldn’t cry, maybe due to the tears already shed when his parents and dog had left the two brothers alone. yet the shock hit him hard, hard enough to make him forget everything prior to Shintaro’s watery eyes and hoarse whisper, “I’m sorry I’m leaving you alone.”

Shintaro’s last words echoed in Ryutaro’s mind far too often and Chinen began to be able to sense it. Ryutaro woke from nightmares by gentle shakes from the other and was taken out of negative thoughts by slight squeezes to the hand. Day after day, Chinen became Ryutaro’s stepping stone, pillar, and guardian angel. The reliance he felt scared even him.

As they walked on, Ryutaro contemplating his addiction and reliance on Chinen and Chinen thinking of whatever he was always so gravely serious about, the sandy earth burning at their feet and the sun burning at their skin. The sunscreen peeled along with flakes of burnt skin and sunburns beginning to form painted Chinen’s shoulders a shade of pink. Despite the burns, Chinen kept himself glued to Ryutaro’s side.

When the two came to the next human contact, they found the sunburns they bore mocked by a pale boy who laid flat on a blue chair-bed as if he were at the beach. Sunglasses on, lemonade in hand, and slight shade from an RV that had somehow survived the sandstorm. The boy looked over at the two and raised his glasses, frowning slightly as he slid off the chair and walked up to the two. Ryutaro braced for the worst and Chinen squeezed his hand. Stopping in front of them, the boy stared down at Chinen and then looked up at Ryutaro.

“Well, all of the sun must be radiating on you, kid,” the boy said, looking at Chinen’s sunburnt shoulders. “Haven’t found a place to scavenge for a while?”

Ryutaro nodded.

The boy motioned for the two of them to follow him as he walked back to the RV. Ryutaro and Chinen looked apprehensively at the slim back of the pale boy, but followed when he glanced back and yelled out, “y’all coming?”

While Chinen’s shoulders were being treated by the porcelain skinned boy, Ryutaro found himself in the company of another man, whose long brunette hair and scowling face made him flinch. The man was tall, towering over Ryutaro, and held a cigarette to his lips, blowing puffs of smoke as he leaned against the RV. Although there was a silence between the two, Ryutaro found himself content with the interaction because the tallness of the other gave him cover from the boiling sun.

Tossing the cigarette onto the sand and stomping out the spark, the man looked over to Ryutaro.

“What’s your name, kid?” The man asked, but it sounded more like a command to identify.

“Morimoto Ryutaro,” Ryutaro stated, moving over to return into the shade that the taller provided.

“Morimoto, huh.” The man seemed to ponder on the name, and Ryutaro could’ve swore that within the wind he could hear a whisper of “sorry” escape the man’s lips. Before he could inquire about it, the pale boy from before came running over.

“Yuyan, let’s get moving. The Red Storm looks like it’s coming.” He looked over at Ryutaro and smiled, “you and your friend are coming with us, of course.”

“Yuyan” sighed, taking out another cigarette. “Two more annoying brats to deal with, huh,” he muttered, stalking off to the RV and dangling the keys. The other boy laughed, motioning for Ryutaro to come along before skipping forward to talk to the sulking brunette.

 

  
“So Morimoto Ryutaro and Chinen Yuri, huh?” The pale boy smiled. “Are you two a thing?”

Chinen flushed, shaking his head frantically. Ryutaro stared apathetically at the flustered Chinen, but grinned a bit when the blushing boy curled up into a ball against the leather seat of the RV.

“Oh, absolutely,” Ryutaro smirked, watching Chinen twitch and curl up even more.

The porcelain boy laughed again, and Ryutaro found himself confused by the sincerity of the happiness in the boy’s voice and face. The glow was there, and he couldn’t figure out the thoughts that ran through the boy’s head.

“Who are you, anyway?” Ryutaro asked, leaned back against the leather. “I can’t believe we just got into an RV with complete strangers.”

The boy laughed again, “rules don’t really play the same way nowadays do they?” He curled his silky black hair around his pale finger, pulling on the loose curls softly. “I’m Inoo Kei, and my loving companion here is Takaki Yuya.”

Then, Chinen looked out the window and his breath hitched.

A twister of red and orange emerged in the distance from all directions behind them. The once slightly visible rooftops were engulfed and left with only sand. Scouring the Earth for any form that wasn’t already sand, the twister relentlessly tore and buried, and Chinen gasped quietly when he saw the roof of last night’s shelter fall under.

“What is that?” Ryutaro inquired, staring wide eyed at the destruction that left no trace.

“Red Storm. Comes every night at the very start of nightfall. You haven’t seen it?” Inoo stared in awe as the two shook their heads. “It’s one of the reasons why second scavengers are so quick to kill. Take too much time and there’s no escape.”

“We usually sleep when the moon starts to show. Chinen here has a schedule that follows the sky,” Ryutaro replied. Inoo looked over at the smaller, and as Ryutaro had said, Chinen was starting to get drowsy just as the night began.

“So I guess you aren’t aware of the sand gators either,” Takaki stated from the front seat.

Ryutaro frowned. “No.”

“Let’s hope your luck affects ours too.”

 

  
The third day of being in the RV, Inoo picked up two more boys from the sandy hell. Takaki was obviously anything but enthralled but he kept his sulking private when he saw the tall, skinny boy and Inoo laughing together. The new boy’s brother was quiet but always had a smile in place. Ryutaro often found him creepy, though he did stare quite a bit, but he began to notice easier than anyone when his smile had a hiccup of a pained face.

Yuto was the scrawny boy’s name. He had been a drummer and university student before the sand had arrived, his younger brother, Raiya, was a high school student. However, Ryutaro believed the younger of the two to be more mature as Yuto had a habit of being an idiot; making walrus teeth with chopsticks, trying to balance spoons on his nose, etc.. It would take a bigger idiot, though, to not see that Yuto had to be the smartest one of the group.

“So this is where you go after dinner,” Ryutaro said, making the tall blonde flinch.

Yuto rubbed his eyes, chuckling softly. “You found me.”

Ryutaro took a seat next to the other against the RV. The two sat in silence, staring at the faraway Red Storm contrast itself with the darkness of the night sky. It was the first time Ryutaro had directly been in contact with the tense silence that Yuto withheld inside, but he had known it was there since the day they had met. Yuto knew the boy’s observations.

“He’s going to die,” Yuto swallowed, playing with his fingers. Despite saying it, his smile stayed in tact. Even when his eyes glistened.

“Yeah,” Ryutaro replied.

Yuto let out a choked laugh. “You’re blunt.” He rested his head against the knees he held to his chest. Even though his face was covered, Ryutaro could still see the smile struggling to stay on his face.

“No use in lying.”

Ryutaro sat silently beside the shaking Yuto. It was funny how identical two people could act when a similar tragedy strikes. Despite all differences, Ryutaro remembered vividly the coldness of the concrete building he and Shintaro had taken shelter in on the night of his death, the almost freezing sensation of the walls against his back as he sat in the corner watching his brother leave him. And here Yuto sat, curled up just as he was, back against the RV, waiting for his brother to die.

The Red Storm got closer and closer and Ryutaro began to wonder if the color came from the pain and love that oozed from the objects and people that it had swallowed. The color representation of blood, pain, and love being the same had always intrigued Ryutaro. Each red particle held either love or pain, maybe even both. “How grotesque,” Ryutaro muttered.

Yuto laughed at this. He laughed heartily and sincerely, wiping away the tears that dripped from his cheeks to the orange sand they sat upon. “Ironic, isn’t it.”

Ryutaro stared at the smiling boy, not knowing whether he spoke of the reality or Ryutaro’s thoughts. But as Yuto got up and dusted himself off, Ryutaro let the comment go and followed behind the other back into the RV, welcomed by the chitter chatter of the other four. Yuto jumped in immediately and began cracking jokes. Everyone laughed, filling the RV with a joy that marked the last day of the fifth year of sand.

  
The next morning, the shelter the six had chosen was silent.

Chinen was curled into the couch in the living room, holding one of the many silk covered pillows into his chest. Across the room, Takaki was smoking on the staircase, staring blankly at a crayon drawn picture of the Earth pinned on the wall. It seemed out of place with the lush and luxuriousness of the household. The thumbtack had begun to bend, almost falling out of the hole it had created in the plaster.

Inoo held his hand against his mouth, shaking his head when Raiya gave him a concerned look. The bedsheet was draped over Raiya’s body but fell flat onto the bed once it reached where the youngest’s knees should be. The blanket continued to fall, inch by inch, upwards until Raiya’s smile disappeared into sand. Inoo kneeled down and cried as Ryutaro picked up every speck of Raiya’s “ashes” and put it into a small, glass bottle.

When Ryutaro went to Yuto’s bedroom, he was met with the other’s grinning face.

“Good morning,” Yuto greeted.

Ryutaro nodded, swirling the glass bottle in his pant pocket between his fingers. He walked up to the bed and went through his thoughts, trying to find the right words. Opening his mouth to speak, he realized that Yuto’s goofy grin was different than usual. He looked down and found that his blanket fell flat onto the bed at the end of his chest.

Ryutaro paused.

“You’re dying too,” he finally said, his voice wavering in a whisper.

Yuto laughed weakly. “Yeah, I guess so.”

The two stayed in silence. Ryutaro watched as the falling sheet went closer and closer to Yuto’s head. Ryutaro shifted his gaze away from Yuto’s smiling face. “Stop smiling,” he wanted to say.

But Yuto broke the silence first.

“Hey,” Yuto hoarsely murmured, holding out an arm that had sand falling from the edges of where his wrist should be. “You’ll take care of him right?”

Ryutaro ran through the responses, through the lucid memories and reminders of his brother’s missing presence. Cold, dark, freezing cold. He looked at Yuto, who’s smile usually radiates a warmth that made Ryutaro think of home, and maybe, he thought, he had trained his smile to become a home for himself and Raiya, just as he had trained himself to pretend to be ignorant. But ignorance is bliss.

“Yeah,” Ryutaro lied, watching as Yuto was reduced to a sculpted bust, “Raiya will be fine.”

Yuto closed his eyes and Ryutaro watched as he disintegrated completely.

“Raiya will be fine.”

Ryutaro pulled the bottle of sand out from his pocket and shakily placed it onto the bed with “Yuto”, if he could still be considered himself.

  
“Wake up.”

Chinen blinked sleepily, making out Ryutaro’s face from behind the pillow’s edge. He pulled himself up and looked at Ryutaro, then to the dining table where Inoo was curled up onto one of the wooden chairs.

“What’s wrong with Inoo?” He asked, rubbing his eyes with the overly large sweater he had found in the master bedroom’s closet the night before.

Ryutaro looked away. As if Chinen could read what had happened through the air of the room, he pulled on Ryutaro’s arm and hugged his arm close in comfort before going over and patting Inoo’s back.

Ryutaro and Chinen ate breakfast while Takaki pushed a metal tube through the older one that had become packed with sand.

“Let’s get going.”

Chinen didn’t inquire anything else.

 

  
Ryutaro had come to realize that despite seeing the Red Storm every day, it never ceased to be incredible and fascinating. During the car rides to nowhere, his eyes were stuck on the blood red twister. However, watching the house they had left behind the missing two of the six get buried and torn apart by the sand was something he couldn’t bring himself to do. Even from such a distance, Ryutaro could see, even feel, where the house was. When the twister got close, Takaki stopped the car, declaring that they were going to scavenge. The brunette quickly slipped out of the driver’s seat and pulled out the circular metal pieces to make the entrance pipe. Rather than coincidence of the market’s red roof peeking from underneath the sand, Ryutaro realized that Takaki couldn’t bear to see the demolition of the grave either, even from the rearview mirror.

And so they slid down the tube and into the market, picking out the dry foods and water to load into the RV. Takaki took his time, wandering about from aisle to aisle regardless of what the signs read. He tried to feign carelessness towards Inoo’s puffy eyes and quiet sniffles, but stole quick glances and whispers of comfort when he thought Ryutaro and Chinen weren’t looking. It wasn’t until then, when Inoo’s recent fake smile disappeared as Takaki murmured into his ear, that Ryutaro realized the two were “a thing”.

While sorting through the stockroom for the non-expired dry foods, the crash of broken glass rang through the market’s empty interior. Chinen froze, poking up from behind a box of pain medicine, and Ryutaro stared at the open door. He glanced at Takaki whose eyes were glaring to see through the darkness of the market but were filled with worry.

A scream.

Takaki pushed the boxes around him out of the way and sprinted out of the stockroom. He raced through the three aisles that led to the front, grabbing a long hammer from the construction goods section. Clenching the wooden handle, he readied himself for what awaited. He ran and ran, and wondered whether the walk to the storeroom was really as long as it felt right now. As he ran, he noticed the green tile floors stained with color. Orange.

Sand poured from the broken window, crawling into the depths of the market. Shards of glass floated on the sea of orange, flowing towards the entrance that the four had used. The metal tube’s entrance was blocked, rather, occupied by a large reptile and a bleeding Inoo.

  
Chinen and Ryutaro made their way back up to the front, finding blood splattered across a sandy sea that continued to deepen as the broken window fell slowly to the pressure of the sand that surrounded it. Ryutaro used his foot to turn over a brown lump that blended into the orange sand, observing it until he realized it was the head of an alligator. It’s body laid beside the entrance of the metal tube, where Takaki was leaning Inoo against the store window.

A full mark of the alligator’s mouth was imprinted on Inoo’s chest. Blood poured from the holes and Takaki tore at his own shirt and tried to tie the fabric onto the dents in his lover’s body but fumbled with the blur that came with the tears that threatened to fall. He mumbled a string of curses, finally getting frustrated and banging his hand against the sand covered floor. Inoo gave Takaki a worried look and a smile, mouthing, “escape” to the duo that stood frozen behind the bent over Takaki.

Chinen stared at the blood stained porcelain boy, biting his lip to hold back tears. But he moved first. Grabbing Ryutaro’s hand and pulling him to the tube, he ushered Ryutaro up the tube and then fought Takaki’s weight and struggling to bring him up as well. Chinen looked one last time at Inoo, who seemed too calm, hoping, deep inside, that Inoo had an elaborate plan and would meet with the trio back on the surface. As he climbed up the tube, though, he came to the conclusion that Inoo wouldn't return to the surface, that there would no longer be the smiling boy in the front seat to poke at Takaki and make Ryutaro and him laugh; he came to the conclusion that Inoo was only happy, almost selfishly, that this time he wouldn’t be the one grieving. But then again, Chinen remembered the sand that trailed Inoo’s path as he walked to the back of the RV, Inoo was close to his death anyway.

 

  
The sand gators increased within the week, filling the underground with a fear that couldn’t be ignored. People had to begin to chose: die on the surface, or die underground. Takaki took his chances, rather, welcomed the risk. Ryutaro could see the desperation to die in his eyes as he battled the reptiles, mercilessly swinging anything he could make a weapon. Chinen always trailed away from the fighting, checking expiration dates on things he knew would expire within five days, not to mention five years, but Ryutaro always stayed because one day, he knew, Takaki would run out of anger to rekindle the fire to fight.

That day, he did. Takaki went limp, dropping the hammer and looking up at the ceiling as if looking for God to tell him the reasons he wanted to know so desperately.

Just as the gator’s mouth was about to clamp down on Takaki just as it did Inoo, another man wrangled it aside, his partner shooting it from the tube.

“Secondary scavengers?” Ryutaro asked, earning a chuckle from the man who held the gun.

“Secondary or primary, we just saved your asses.”

The brunette smacked the sniper, bowing in apology. “Sorry he’s so rude. He’s not as annoying as he seems, trust me.” He walked up to Ryutaro, holding out his hand. “I’m Yabu and this is Hikaru,” he said, motioning to the blonde that stared at Takaki with an emotion Ryutaro couldn’t pinpoint.

“Ryutaro,” he replied.

 

  
“That’s the last of it,” Yabu called, sliding the door close.

“Thank you so much,” Chinen called, running over to Yabu to hand him a piece of jerky from the bag he had opened. Yabu thanked him and leaned against the RV to eat. The two chewed on the jerky while watching Hikaru try to make Ryutaro’s blank face falter, Chinen’s eyes wandering over to Takaki’s dazed face a few meters away from the joking blonde.

“How did you guys manage to keep this thing from sinking anyway,” Yabu questioned.

Chinen watched as Ryutaro got up to smack the back of Hikaru’s head, making the blonde fall face first into the sand. When Hikaru sprung back up, he yelled words undecipherable to the relaxing duo but it seemed to have made Ryutaro shout back.

“I’m not really sure, honestly. I’ve been wondering about it too.” Chinen thought a bit. “I think it may be Takaki’s doing. He’s always been disappearing in the dead of night with a shovel and the keys.”

“Well, it’s a good thing he does. Having this thing could be the difference between life and death.”

Looking at the sand dance along the breeze that flowed through, Chinen kicked a bit of the sand to bury the tip of his shoe. “It’s not life or death that matters to him,” he whispered, looking over at Takaki. His eyes were blank and void of emotion, his slouched position making him seem warped by the heat waves.

“Must of lost someone.”

Chinen looked over at Yabu. The brunette’s eyes were enveloped with fear and sadness, and as Chinen trailed his eyes, he found that the older was looking at Hikaru.

“It’s really the only thing you can lose at this point,” Yabu murmured, “you can only lose the person you cherish the most. It’s ironic how I can say ‘only’ and something so important in the same sentence. Before this, I would’ve never said it.”

 

  
After two days of rest, Takaki brought himself back up from the dead. The Red Storm was close behind but within a few hours of going a hundred miles per hour, they were far away, with the storm back in the distance. The RV was more lively now that Yabu and Hikaru joined. Yabu chatted with Takaki about useless nothings to keep his mind, and his own, off of the tragedy that already has and that was bound to happen. In the back, Hikaru was always talking, either making Chinen laugh or getting into a fight with Ryutaro for never laughing.

Weeks passed on and it came to a point where it seemed almost as if the apocalypse wasn’t happening.

But behind the scenes in the RV, Ryutaro had begun to find it hard to cope. He took up smoking, watching the puffs of smoke trail up into the air gave him a sense of satisfaction, as if the smoke would reach up to the sky and leave the atmosphere and bother whatever or whoever it was that made this whole thing happen. Ryutaro usually found himself leaning against the back of the RV late at night, watching the Red Storm under the stars just as he did with Yuto. On the other side, he could hear Takaki weeping. As Ryutaro stared at the beautiful disaster that came to kill, he wondered when his time would come. He began to realize how redundant the journey and surviving really is. But more than redundancy, he realized that mourning was for the living, not for the dead, just as running was for the sake of not dying, not for the sake of living.

 

  
On the first morning of the month, Chinen woke up screaming.

Ryutaro pulled him into his arms and rocked him as he did when the smaller boy got the nightmares that frequented his sleep. Usually, by two rocks, Chinen would have calmed down, but the wailing continued and got louder and louder. Yabu ran into the RV and tried to ask over Chinen’s screaming, “what’s wrong?” Ryutaro could only shrug his shoulders and feel his heart accelerate as his companion clawed at his head.

Outside, Takaki yelled out for Yabu. Hikaru laid on the burning sand, curling up like a drying worm and shuddering as he bit his lip until it bled. Yabu carried Hikaru into the RV, Takaki right behind, and put him in the air conditioning.

It didn’t take long before Chinen exhausted himself and fell unconscious, blood from his scalp coloring his nails from under. Ryutaro felt his lungs stopping, he quietly gasped for air, shakily taking Chinen’s hand and entwining his fingers with the other’s.

Hikaru still shuddered uncontrollably but refused to let out a single noise. Yabu pried at his teeth, trying to keep Hikaru’s lips from getting cut any deeper, but the blonde shook his head and tried to curl into a ball. Giving up, Yabu tried to ease Hikaru by stroking his hair as he laid down onto Yabu’s lap. Soon enough, he was asleep.

“Taka—”

“Don’t.”

Ryutaro’s eyes welled up with tears as he stared at Chinen’s face cringe in pain even in his sleep. Ignorance must truly be bliss.

 

  
When Yabu started looking after Hikaru during the nights, he realized that Hikaru had had the buzzing in his head for some time. The routine movements of wrapping himself in blankets to keep Yabu from feeling the shaking and biting onto the blankets to stop himself from screaming, Hikaru had been chosen for long before. Hikaru was chosen to die.

When Chinen woke up, he couldn’t remember the commotion he had caused before. He just quietly watched as Yabu walked to the kitchen for water and back to the room where he was nursing Hikaru. Day after day, Yabu would do the methodical movements and Chinen would watch as his broken body fell apart with glass-like clinks with every step he took. His body was a glass puzzle piece and the pieces he missed shattered once they fell to the floor.

After the sixth day, Yabu sat on the chair across from Chinen and stared blankly at the sand outside the window.

“Chinen,” Yabu whimpered, taking in a deep breath as if just saying a single name was too much. “Chinen, I love Hikaru. I really, really love Hikaru.”

Chinen looked at the floor while Yabu continued confessing his love to the deceased in between sobs. He wondered how his English teacher would feel, hearing Yabu talk in present tense when he should be talking in past tense. Then he realized, she probably wasn’t around anymore and that, truthfully, without a set language, there was no longer such thing as tenses, such thing as language.

“I love Hikaru.”

Within the next week, Yabu was gone too.

 

  
Sitting outside for dinner became a tradition, as well as sleeping outside and not sitting on a certain side of the RV. It seemed that there wasn’t much left of the world, Ryutaro believed that they may be the only three left.

“‘The world is coming to an end’,” Takaki mused as he took a swig of beer, “what a load of bullshit.” He tossed the old newspaper out to nowhere. “If it was ending,” he continued, “we’d all would’ve died at the same time.”

There was a sense of longing, one that Ryutaro would’ve never guessed would ever be paired with the sentence Takaki had said. But as he stared tiredly at Chinen, who cringed every so often from an “ongoing headache”, he could feel the other’s feelings. He could tell too easily that Chinen was next. If the three of them were the last three in the world, Chinen would be in third place for the ranking of “lived the longest”. Ryutaro pulled the smaller into his lap, wrapping his arms around his waist. Chinen tried to ask Ryutaro what was wrong but instead stayed quiet when he felt the younger boy cuddle his nose into the crook of his neck.

When Ryutaro got up to smoke, Chinen stared at the slightly drunken Takaki.

“Do you miss Inoo?” Chinen asked.

Takaki stared at the ground, burying the beer bottle under the sand.

“The world is ugly, wants a makeover. This is just the plastic surgery,” he answers instead.

Chinen went along. “Not everything is ugly in the world, though.”

“Of course not,” Takaki stated, falling onto his back to look up at the stars, “Kei was anything but ugly.”

"Then why—"

“When there’s so much ugly in the world, the tiny parts of pretty like you, like Kei, everything, everyone just drowns into the big majority of ugly and makes it seem like everything’s ugly.”

Chinen stared as Takaki blabbered on about how truly disgusting the Earth must seem from a far, distant, peaceful planet, even galaxy, until he talked himself to sleep. When Ryutaro came back, Chinen curled up into his side and stared at the stars and the milky way, wondering if it could be true. Perhaps the equilibrium of peace and disorder had been broken too far. The quiet buzzing began again, he cringed.

  
When the two woke up, they found Takaki had shot himself in the head sometime during the night before. Chinen squeezed Ryutaro’s hand and looked away as the younger tried to hold back the emotions that wanted to spill out. He buried the gun and started packing a backpack with supplies.

 

  
“I guess we’re the only two left,” Ryutaro murmured.

Chinen nodded, circling his arm around the other’s.

As they walked and walked to nowhere, Ryutaro began to grasp the situation: Chinen would die, and he would be alone. Somehow, he found himself starting to wish that Takaki had killed him instead. He wondered if Takaki’s body had been eaten by the sand gators, or if it had sunken into the sand. If it hadn’t, the Red Storm would most likely be there by nightfall.

Chinen had episodes of the buzzing. Every so often, he’d collapse and try to assure the other that he was fine, until Ryutaro slid the backpack off and dragged it along the sand, replacing the pack with Chinen. It was hot, blazing, but rest wasn’t an option like it was with the RV. Ryutaro had to continue or get caught by the twister that bled the paradoxical love and pain. So he continued to walk. When he decided to set up a metal tube, he slid down into the market, picking out an icecream for Chinen, and one for himself before climbing back up. As he was climbing, though, he started to wonder how long they would really last. Truthfully, it was pure luck that the duo had been far enough from the Red Storm for the first three years, but it had caught up.

Chinen took the icecream and tried a smile. Ryutaro smiled back, though he felt like doing anything but so. He pulled Chinen back onto his back and continued to walk, still dragging the backpack behind him.

The vanilla icecream began to drip down Chinen’s arm and into the crevice between his body and Ryutaro’s. Their bodies became glued together with icecream and sweat, though Ryutaro wasn’t sure if the other was even alive anymore. He looked back to see the Red Storm bigger than it was before, it was closer.

“Yuri?” Ryutaro called, feeling his heart stop as Chinen’s hold on his neck got looser.

“R...u.”

Ryutaro continued walking, feeling a sense of relief that the boy hadn’t left him. With only sand before him and the Red Storm behind him, Ryutaro wondered when the appropriate time to give up would be. The answer was easy: when there was no longer the weight of a life he treasured on his back. But he still thought of it, forcing himself to be ignorant. Ignorance is bliss. Ignorance is bliss.

When Chinen’s arms fall limp, though, Ryutaro’s heart ceases and he knows it’s almost the “appropriate time”. He catches Chinen’s arm and pulls him into his chest before the small boy hits the ground, and Ryutaro holds him for a while, trying to catch his breath, but knowing that the other needn’t breathe any longer. However, Ryutaro still cradled him, mumbling words and phrases that meant nothing, until there was no longer a body in his arms, only bits of sand covering his legs and in the crevices of his palms. He cried and wailed, lashing out at the orange sand that covered everywhere until he ran out of fire.

He got up.

He started walking.

But this time, Ryutaro didn’t walk to nowhere. He stared at the red twister and walked towards it, feeling the wind generated from the movements blowing away the last bits of Chinen from his body.

He smiled when a quiet buzz began in his head, growing louder and louder.

Perhaps being the only one left angered the one who had brought this upon the world. It was time for the last execution, and it would be a quick one.

As Ryutaro fell, he tried to see through his half-lidded eyes, the Red Storm.

But as his eyes began to grow heavy and close on their own, he saw the Red Storm burst, turning into a million sand particles and raining down gently like snow. The red pieces covered him slowly, gradually, until there was no longer Morimoto Ryutaro.

 

It was time for the Earth to restart.


End file.
